


Sailing to Byzantium

by BlueMaple



Series: Harry Potter and the Road Not Taken [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Acromantulas, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe - World War II, Basilisk references, Brazil, Castelobruxo, Catholic Character, Catholic Culture, Catholic Imagery, Gen, Ghosts, Great Bloody Snakes - Freeform, Grief, Grindelwald - Freeform, Grindelwald's War, Hogwarts, House Elves, Inferred Time Travel, Lethifolds - Freeform, London, Loss, Mourning, Murder, Mystery, NO religion bashing, Obsession, Pablo Neruda's Poetry, Plonkers, Prequel, Prophecy, Roman Catholicism, Romance, Rough Sex, Smut, Student Exchange (Hogwarts), Tales of Beedle the Bard - Freeform, Teenaged sex, The Boy With Kaleidoscope Eyes, The Room of Hidden Things, The Room of Requirement - Freeform, The Strange Familiar, True Love, Wandlore, West of the Moon East of the Sun, World War II, Yeats, animagi, solace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-03 18:20:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12152199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMaple/pseuds/BlueMaple
Summary: When is the beginning of all things... Not truly the beginning? In 1943, forty six years before Harry Potter (Ren Cartwright) and Neville Longbottom (Neil Cartwright) cross time and space on their Interdimensional Fix-It Mission, young Inez Hernandez of Castelobruxo, Brazil, in an attempt to flee her personal grief at the loss of her beloved twin sister to the plague of lethifolds overtaking her continent, embarks on a Cross-Continental Magical Adventure to war-torn Europe on an exchange program with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Once arrived, she is greeted first by a young-and-upcoming school-aged Tom Riddle, and, over the months that follow, is reminded of an essential truth; that though you can never truly leave your troubles behind, because there are always new, unexpected and at times quite horrifying variations awaiting -  there too  can be most unexpected light in the darkness, and the hope of grace and miracles, if only one has the courage to be patient. BEST READ DURING/IMMEDIATELY AFTER SOLACE.





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> 'Sailing to Byzantium' is not actually a prequel, or even part of the sequential series of 'The Road Not Taken' 'verse. It's a referential stand-alone of sorts, set decades before the first novella in the series again, and will be added to (four or five chapters in total) at reasonably regular intervals, between chapters of the current book of the main series. That being said... There are references, however vague, to problems and potential resolutions to events in the future. No spoilers, exactly, but definitely references, in temporal and confusing neo-prophetic context, of course!
> 
> Vocabulary List 
> 
> ISEP - International Student Exchange Program
> 
> Vixi Maria - Holy Mother!  
> minha rainha - My Queen  
> (minha) vidha - My Life (term of endearment)  
> Desculpe-me - I'm sorry  
> Sim - Yes  
> Boa noite - Good evening

On the first day of the new school year, September 1st, 1943, the Hogwarts Express gave over all tradition in the name of prudence and practicality and transported its passengers to their destination, not from the gritty, explosive bowels of  war-torn London, but from the relatively safer embarking point of Dublin, Ireland.

It was an inconvenience, but not so much of one that the parents of the students grumbled on it. Grindelwald's War had been raging throughout Europe for nearly five years, and though Great Britain remained relatively unscathed (rumour had it that the author of all the trouble was leery of forcing a confrontation on one Albus Dumbledore's home ground), the local Muggles were offering more than enough of their version to be going on with. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, though, the adverts reassured all of its prospective local and international exchange students, was as safe a place as it had ever been, and remained unaffected by either conflict.

That being said, there was still the issue of getting _to_ the school, and given the alarmingly increased number of bombings in the vicinity of King's Cross in the latter half of the summer, the Board of Governors unanimously agreed that holding the annual Gathering of the Sprogs at Platform 9 and ¾ was a bit of a dodgy proposition.

So it was that one sixteen-year-old  Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez, late of Castelobruxo School in Brazil - four foot eleven inches of tumbling stormy hair, dark eyes, exquisite copper-coloured skin and perfectly delicate, yet lushly-molded... everything -  found herself sitting on a wooden bench at the designated station, more than ready to embark upon the last stage of her long and tiring cross-continental journey. She was dressed, not in her school uniform, but in a plain dark Nomaj traveling skirt, blouse, sweater, and fisherman's cap (she'd bundled the storm into the charmed hat for the journey) so no one was paying her the least bit of attention. It was, in the given moment, exactly how she preferred things... The fact that she was in the company of her temporary inter-school liaison, an ancient Catholic nun in full habit, helped considerably, and she took full advantage to listen in as several local students spoke in hushed tones on how, two months earlier, a fourteen-year-old girl had _died_ up at her host school, how a boy had been convicted of her _murder,_ and how the monster he'd unleashed upon the castle had been captured and disposed of.

"Here we go." The nun prodded her, and nodded as the scarlet train (the photos there had featured heavily in the adverts) pulled in. Inez hugged her impulsively as she rose... The old woman patted her back.

"Be a good girl, dearie,” she said. “And have a good term. Don't be shy on hexing the boys if they get too fresh with you, just as Sister Ernestine showed you, and as for the rest... Well. We'll all be praying for you. God bless you!"

" _Muito obrigada._ " Inez kissed her back. "You have been so wonderful, you and all of the sisters. I thank you so much for your hospitality, Mother Brigid, and for your remembrances. I will remember all of you, I swear it, as our beautiful Jesus remembers us all.”

The nun just smiled and made her way down the station. Inez glanced around. The compartment doors on the train were just opening... Uninhibited by luggage or animal, she cast a quick Notice-Me-Not and darted up the steps of the last carriage, ducking into the last compartment on the left. Inez was not a remotely anti-social girl, quite the opposite, but for the next eight hours or so, she planned to take full advantage of the opportunity provided her to enjoy that last leg of her long journey on her own terms.

Those terms did not involve having carriage mates. She closed the door firmly and performed the spell to seal all cracks and niches in the walls, floor, ceiling and windows... She followed it up with a privacy spell cast on the empty compartment, sealing off the visuals of the door so that no one else could enter. Light flooded from every corner: soft and brilliant... The padded benches disappeared, leaving only a softly padded floor. The empty racks above receded, leaving the walls smooth and untouched from curved roof to ceiling. The curtains turned to translucent ivory and pale yellow. Finally, she charmed the entire compartment to smell of the jungle after a good, hard rain, and the walls and floor again to radiate comfortably tropical temperatures. When the place was as secure and familiar as she could make it, she cast a quick accommodation spell on the interior of the compartment, and Changed.

 _A whole year with only one student lost, the guilty party apprehended, and the beast banished?_ The enormous snake now filling the compartment to capacity coiled her shimmering copper and green self into a comfortable knot and yawned enormously... Her hooded, flat eyes closed to bare slits. _Now_ there _is a proper fairy tale._

Seven and a half hours later, Inez uncoiled herself,  blurred, and reluctantly transformed the compartment back to standard. She transfigured a pebble in her pocket into a mirror and retrieved her wrapped packet of student robes from the shrunken trunk in her second pocket. The thick wool clothes and stockings were a far cry from the light, silky and colourful shifts and sandals so popular among the female students at home, and itched terribly....The muted black and grey school robes were a little better, at least in terms of texture, though when compared to her memories of the sleeveless emerald robes of Castelobruxo, just depressing. They were also absolutely huge on her. Somewhere along the sort-post-and-deliver line, the specifics of her order had obviously got confused with someone else’s.

Inez flicked her wand briskly. The robes shortened a good half-foot at both hem and sleeve, and a judicious dart and tuck here and there rendered them, if not flattering, at least  inoffensive. When she was finished, she started to slide her wand away, then paused, peering down the collar of her blouse and beneath the waistband of her skirt. The wand flicked again. Her underclothing promptly turned a deep, hot pink. Satisfied, she tossed her discarded traveling clothes in her trunk, shrank the works, and tucked it in her pocket again.

Inez waited till the last of the students was off the train, and made her way out. The carriages that carried the older students to Hogwarts were drawn by thestrals, she knew, though ironically, she couldn't see them.

No one ever saw death where she came from, or internalized it. Where she came from, Death saw and internalized _you_.

The sun was going down. As the first rays lit the dark scar of the horizon, the little gold cross tucked beneath the girl's collar warmed significantly against her bare flesh... Inez crossed herself quickly and unobtrusively, and murmured the prayer that every child of South and Central America and the Pacific Islands attending Castelobruxo School had recited at sunset, every night for the last thousand-plus years since the school was established.

_St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle..._

As the last of the crowd of students had piled into the penultimate carriage, and as the final one pulled up, Inez cast the counter-charm to the Notice-Me-Not she'd held since the train had arrived in Dublin hours before. As she did, she heard a sudden rattle of bells on bridles, and the clatter of hooves, and the cool brush of a skeletal wing against her cheek. Another child of another country might have jumped and screamed, unnerved, but Inez only reached out and patted what felt like a broad, skeletal rump. The friendly whicker sounded again.

" _Boa noite_ , _Senhor_ Thestral," she murmured to it. "Or _Senhorita,_ or _Senhora_ as the case may be.  I am Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez of Castelobruxo School, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. I will remember you, mm, as long as _you_ promise to remember to let me know when you are in my vicinity while I am here? I know that you are there, of course, your visibility has nothing to do with the fact, but still. I do not react well to the thought, much less the actuality, of certain types of surprises."

The thestral said nothing, but the rattle of the bells sounded again.  Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez pulled her fisherman's cap down, set her shoulders under the unfamiliar black robes, and, lit wand in hand, mounted the unfurling steps to the shadowed interior.

* * *

 

**The Great Hall**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**

If she had not been a twenty-five foot Giant Anaconda in human clothing, Inez thought as she stood in line awaiting her turn at the Sorting Stool, and therefore at the absolute apex of the predatory food chain, she would have found the castle absolutely terrifying. The dim stone halls, the corners, the dark and shifting shadows, the flickering lights, never mind the black cloaks everywhere... As it was, sweat trickled down her back, and her hands, fisted in her robes, were chilled and clammy as she resisted, with every ounce of strength in her, the instinct to start throwing Patronuses in every direction there was.

 _There are no lethifolds in Scotland. There are no lethifolds in_ Europe _._ There is nothing to fear here. _Absolutely_ nothing _._

 _Vixi_ Maria _. I am going to go insane before the week is out. I know it._

_No Changing. No Changing. No Changing..._

"Hernandez!" a voice called.

It took a moment for Inez to process her own name. She jumped, and made her way, sweating violently now under the heavy clothing, to the front of the vast hall.

 _They are robes. Just robes. You are_ not _standing in a roomful of students wrapped in Evil Incarnate. They. Are. Just._ Robes _._

"Welcome to Hogwarts, Miss Hernandez!" The man greeting her, standing beside the Sorting Stool, was tall and slim, with shining auburn hair, ivory robes embroidered in gold, and a neatly groomed, revoltingly flamboyant beard. His blue eyes twinkled down at her. "Professor Albus Dumbledore: Transfiguration. I understand from your teachers that you're going to be quite the treat in my classes!"

"I will do my best, Professor," she murmured. "And I am very pleased to meet you. It is very nice to be here."

"Excellent." Even at the distance, she could smell his breath, sweet and cloying with some citrus-flavoured candy. "Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to take off that charming cap."

"Uh?"

"The Sorting Hat doesn't like competition," he explained, nodding at the item he was holding.

"Ah. _Sim_ , of course." The unleashed storm of her hair, loosed from its magical restraints, tumbled down and down... Albus Dumbledore didn't catch his breath, but he certainly looked taken aback, and if not aroused (and Inez knew all the variations on _that_ particular theme extremely well; she'd been fending them off, both harmless and not, since she started at Castelobruxo) positively _delighted_ with the aesthetic feast presented him. She eyed him up and down, noting the garish jewelry on his hands, the swirling cut of his robes, the beard again, and...

 _Are those_ beads _at the ends of his moustache?_

Vixi Maria _. We are not in Brazil anymore, oh-no-we-are-_ not.

It was, despite her semi-amused and shocked... 'Disgust' wasn't the right word; concern, yes, 'concern' was a good word - comforting. Unlike the vast majority of her peers and countrymen, and no matter accepted Catholic doctrine, Inez had no particular prejudice against those men inclined to their own gender, primarily because they had the ability to carry on a conversation with her rather than with her breasts and hips. All she would have to do, she decided, when she was feeling overwhelmed by the shadows and flickering and enveloping black robes, was take a good hard look at the man before her.  There was no way - _no_ way - that such an individual would ever present so openly in her homeland. Padre Hector would have had him up in his office and speaking to Jesus on, at the _very_ least, his lack of self-preservation before his second foot had ever made it through the front doors of the school.

Thus reassured, she approached the stool, regarding the item in his hands distrustfully. The adverts had described _that_ particular feature of the school too. Shabby, patched, innocuous...

"It's quite alright, Miss Hernandez," Professor Dumbledore reassured her with a chuckle. "It doesn't bite. You just put it on, and it'll tell you everything about yourself you never knew."

It was not, the unfortunate laws of her country of origin considered, a comforting thought. The girl seated herself gingerly, acutely aware of every eye on the hall now arrowed in on her. The infamous Sorting Hat settled on her head. Before it had a chance to take a metaphorical breath...

Boa noite _,_ Senhor _Hat_ , she thought at it. _Be warned, if you do anything but examine the objective necessary, I_ will _shred you._

 **_What is it with you people from Castelobruxo?_ ** the Sorting Hat thought back. **_I'm a_ ** **Hat.** **_I Sort. That's it_ ** . **WELCOME TO HOGWARTS, MISS HERNANDEZ!**

" _Muito obrigada_ ," she said aloud. "You are very kind." Her voice was sweet and throaty. More than one murmur stopped mid-syllable.

 **_Of course. Alright. Let's see  what we've got to be going on wi..._ ** **Well.** **_Well, well, well, well,_ ** **well.** **_Wouldn't_ ** **that** **_just make you Queen down in Slyther... Wait. You're a_ ** **Muggleborn?**

Nomaji- _born,_ she corrected internally. _I am. Is that a problem?_

**_Problematic, anyway. Hufflepuff's a possibility, but its proximity to that problematic considered, I'd recommend against it. You've read up on the other two houses, I see, and you'd do well in either, so... Preferences?_ **

Sim. _I will take the one with the in-house library._

 **AS YOU SAY, THEN** , the Sorting Hat said aloud. **WELCOME AGAIN, MY DEAR, AND ENJOY YOUR YEAR IN ...** **_RAVENCLAW!_ **

"Obrigada," she said aloud again, and was about to remove the Hat when...

 **_Miss Hernandez_** , the Hat said silently.

_Sim?_

**_I would strongly,_ ** **strongly** **_recommend that you keep the specifics of certain of your abilities, if not those abilities themselves, to yourself. I understand that it's tradition in your lands anyway, but given your heritage and the times, it could provoke a kind of trouble for you here at Hogwarts that you would have absolutely no control over._ ** **NEXT!**

Inez handed off the Hat to the professor and made her way to the indicated table. Assessing, if not actually unfriendly looks arrowed in on her from every angle as she settled herself.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," one of the older girls introduced herself. She had a sallow complexion, most unfortunate eyebrows and _very_ unfortunate lank, thin hair. "Darlene Tuft. Seventh year prefect."

"Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez," Inez responded courteously. "It is very nice to meet you, Miss Tuft. I understand that Ravenclaw suffered the loss of one of its members this past year; may I offer you all my condolences?"

A gulping sniffle sounded from behind her.

"You're so _nice!"_ a nasal, breathy voice sounded. Inez nearly fell off her chair as she turned and met the protuberant, misty eyes of...

"AHHHHHHHHH!" Every single member of the House screamed in horror.

"Hello, everyone," the owner of the voice simpered. "So nice to see you all again! How was the train ride? Myrtle Warren," she introduced herself to Inez. "I'm the object of your sympathy."

"Subject," one of the others said automatically. Inez collected herself.

"It is very nice to meet you, Miss Warren. _Desculpe-me;_ I am so sorry if it is rude to ask, but... Are you a ghost?"

 _"Ob-_ viously! Don't you have ghosts where you come from?"

"No," Inez said, and it was true. Ghosts were residual imprints of those souls who had been, at the crucial moment, too afraid to die to submit to the incipient inevitable. Considering how most people where she came from went, dying was likely more of an escape in the given moment than not. "We do not."

"Hmmph. What _do_ you have?" Myrtle asked, and before she could answer... "Do you have a _booooy_ friend?" It was a coy, coquettish little smirk. All of the Ravenclaws, recovered from their aghast shock at seeing this most unexpected (and from the expressions on most of their faces, unwelcome) vision of their former housemate, sniffed in patent snotty disapproval. It lost something in translation, Inez observed, considering their obvious and avid greedy anticipation of her response.

"As a matter of fact," she said, "I do." The collective reserved looks of her female table-mates immediately softened at that. The boys were another story, but then boys generally were, she'd noted, regardless of nation.

"Oooooooooh! What's his _naaaaame_? Do you have a _phoooooto_?"

"His name is Antonio. And no, I do not. That does not mean I cannot show him to you, though." She let her wand slide out, and flicked and twisted deftly. The air swirled, and reformed...Before the ghost's eyes stood a life-sized, three-dimensional image of a lithe, dark young man in sandals, light cotton trousers and shirt, and a sleeveless emerald green robe... He was not overly tall, but he had fine, narrow features, a thin, sensuous mouth and surprisingly delicate eyebrows poised as if to take flight... His crow-black hair was thick and lustrous, curling slightly at his nape and around his ears, and his eyes, solemn and equable as his features at first examination, positively danced with enjoyment and whimsy... He bore a wand in one hand, a strapped satchel over one shoulder, and a Quidditch broom strapped to his back. So solid was he that seemed almost to breathe.

"Ant _ooooo_ nio," the ghost sing-songed and swooped off with a shrieking giggle. Several of her new housemates stood, coming to prod at the image. It stood patiently.

"What spell did you use here?" one of the girls asked eagerly. "I've never seen it before; will you show us how you did it?"

Before Inez could answer, the table exploded in food. The young ISEP student surveyed the dishes about her, her dismay growing with every moment at the evidence of this first and glaringly problematic cultural differential before her.  As a devout, practicing Catholic, she would sooner have walked wandless into the jungle before eating meat on a Friday.

"Is there fish available?' she ventured tentatively.  The other Ravenclaws looked at her blankly. The young ISEP student sighed inwardly. The Forbidden Forest was well stocked with strolling snacks, she'd heard, though negotiating with the mermaids for fish in Black Lake might prove a bit tricky, but her eating habits since Changing last spring were even trickier.  Fridays aside, and small as she was in human form, she now took rather more refueling than a few platters of desolate, overcooked vegetables could provide, and she was coming up on her monthly urge to glut besides. If she'd been at home, she'd have gone out once full dark had fallen, hunted down a deer, inhaled it whole, gone straight to bed and spent the weekend before classes started sleeping it off, but that simply wasn't an option here...  She didn't even have the option of stuffing herself on desserts to accommodate. She'd completely lost her sweet tooth since Changing again, to the point where anything more sugary than plain raw fruit made her violently ill.

Never mind, she thought in dismay as she surveyed her new house-mates' plates, the _state_ of the local cuisine. Everything - _everything_ \- that hadn’t been boiled to faded and colourless mash seemed very nearly burnt to leather. Her advisor had warned her, but at the time she'd been filling out the ISEP application, a mere eight weeks ago, she simply hadn't, in her frenzied and absolute grief over the loss of her twin sister Consuela, been able to process the finer details. Even Antonio hadn't been able to get through to her.

"These details are important, _minha rainha_ ," her lover had said gently. "The first year following the Change is the most challenging, we all know, in terms of learning to control your instincts, and yours, like your form itself, are not subtle, mm? The other schools, they are a little more lenient on the subject of underage Animagery; the teachers might understand and help accommodate for your needs while keeping your secret, but Europeans... They are bound to their rules, and there is the war there besides. And you have heard what the other ISEP students have said of Hogwarts besides, that snakes are considered, if not exactly evil, than more inclined to the Dark than not, and you are Nomaji-born, and the prejudice there is at its height. If anyone was to discover you, you would be condemned from all sides."

"No one will discover me," Inez had said roughly.

"But there is nothing _for_ you at Hogwarts, _vidha_! Perhaps Ilvermorny, or Uagadou..."

"I do not _want_ to go to Ilvermorny!" Ilvermorny was in the United States, and just at that moment, Inez wanted nothing more than to get away from any association with any nation with the hated 'America' in the title. She wanted oceans between her and her grief, not simply more plague-ridden, land-bound countries. "And Uagadou..."

She stopped. She had not been able to explain her aversion to the idea of Uagadou. In later years she would think on it  more carefully, and realize that it hadn't been so much an aversion to the place as it had been an instinct to go, instead, with the admittedly least desirable option on the list... Even drowning as she was in her pain, Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez had never been one to ignore her instincts. If Consuela, she thought, had had half the sense that Inez had instinct, she would never have slipped out just before sunset to the fruit vendors' to fetch up that damned papaya she'd been craving.

"I will be fine." She'd waved off Inez' concern. "It is just on the corner, and I have my wand, see?" She'd taken the slender pale stick from the counter between them, and stuck it in her pocket. "I will be back in ten minutes."

But she had not been back in ten minutes, and as it turned out, she hadn't had her wand. She'd had Inez' wand. The two were as identical as the girls themselves, and she had seized the wrong one from the two lying in the kitchen counter. The only difference between the two was that one functioned only for Inez, and the other only for Consuela. Not a hair's difference between the two of them in terms of the aesthetics, but otherwise...

Inez had always been a prodigy at Transfiguration. Consuela was equally talented at Charms... Inez had Changed that spring, on Easter Sunday, in fact, not quite three months before. Consuela's form had not yet shown itself; it was more subtle, her teachers said, like the girl herself, if not exactly shy, and was taking its time.

Thirty minutes later, and the sun had set, and Consuela had not returned. Their parents had held out hope till just before dawn. It had only taken Inez herself twenty minutes to lose hers. It was not a matter of timing. It was a matter of their twinship. One minute, she knew that Consuela was alive. Two minutes later... Her instincts had told her she was not.

"But she was not _sleeping!"_ her mother had wailed frantically. "They only take those who are _sleeping!"_

"Or not looking," Inez said dully. "She was to be a bat, Mami. A fruit bat. The papaya... All she has eaten for two weeks has been papaya and bananas. And even as she left, she was tilting her head and closing her eyes, as if sounding."

It was the truth. Yes, it was the truth. She never told her parents, or even Antonio, the rest of it, though. The truth that Consuela had not, in fact, picked up the wand off the counter. She had asked Inez to pass it to her, and Inez, distracted by the boiling kettle, had reached out and picked up her sister's... Or begun to. Her own wand, drawn by her magic, had  obviously rolled just a little, reaching her distracted palm first.

* * *

 

Lost in her thoughts, she barely realized when the meal ended, only starting to awareness when the benches all around scraped and the students rose, forming neat double lines. She rose herself, hastily, the cap she'd placed in her lap falling to the floor. Even as she bent to pick it up, another hand rescued it. Inez straightened, accepting it as she looked up, her mouth opening to thank her benefactor...

And the smell of him - something rotting, decaying...  _damned_.... hit her nose with the force of a Nomaji sledgehammer. She very nearly vomited on the spot. It faded just as abruptly. She breathed deeply, her eyes watering.

" _Desculpe-me_ ," she managed, blinking. "I am very tired suddenly. It is all quite overwhelming."

"Quite alright," the young man said. His voice was cold and smooth, and as she straightened, she saw that his tie was green and silver, rather than blue and bronze as hers. He had stepped out of the line opposite, from Slytherin Table. "Miss Hernandez, is it?"

"Yes," she said. He was tall, pale and immaculate with dark hair and dark eyes. Quite good looking, objectively speaking, though...

She frowned slightly. It could have been a trick of the flickering light, but just for a moment, she could have sworn she saw his irises shift, the colour separating and swarming into a squirming mass of vivid crimson specks before coalescing again to dark charcoal grey. Her stomach twisted, hard, and she took an automatic half step back. He didn't appear to notice.

"Tom Riddle," he said. He had an odd, near indiscernible accent: fluid and whispering. Inez' ear cocked immediately, her every sense on sudden alert. "Sixth year Slytherin prefect. Welcome to Hogwarts."

The plethora of barely hissed 's's  there confirmed it. In a land where fully one tenth of all Animagi were some variation on the serpentine theme, and where everyone in the process of Changing displayed certain quite predictable symptoms according to their blossoming forms... That accent was completely unmistakable, especially, _especially_ , to one who had managed the Change herself, and now spoke the language in either of her forms as fluently as if she'd been born to it.

_He is a Parselmouth._

"Thank you," she said automatically. He turned, and that smell wafted by her again. She held her breath as she turned away, following her housemates thankfully. She felt his eyes boring into her back.

"You are very beautiful, Miss Hernandez."

Even over the noise, a few ears caught Riddle's words, and startled eyes turned. Inez stopped in her tracks. Around her, others stopped, from both double lines, looking at the young man in unmistakable, open-mouthed shock. His face was cold, his eyes aloof, objective, even as they raked over her... Before she could respond, the lines jostled and moved again, and she was swept away, thankfully up the stairs and in the opposite direction as Tom Riddle and his housemates. Up and up, through to the north side of the castle, and up again, and once arrived, she was sufficiently distracted by the novelty of her new surroundings that she was able to put aside the memory, at least in the moment... Soon, Darlene Tuft was leading her up yet another flight of stairs, showing her to a huge circular room. The floors were grey stone, scrubbed and immaculate, the walls white-panelled... A square of deep blue carpet had been placed beside each of the six large, blue canopied beds, right where chilled feet would land upon rising of a morning. Each of the beds had a curtained alcoved window beside it, with sparkling glass and a deep, padded seat, perfect for curling up with a book. The left-side inner wall of the each alcove hosted an inset bookshelf, supplied with a stack of parchment, an eagle-feather quill, and a non-spillable bottle of ink. Five of the six beds had trunks at the foot, and in the wall directly opposite each was a narrow door that led to a closet for hanging robes and clothes. Three of the beds hosted comfortably snoozing cats.

"I'm not sure what's happened to... Oh." Darlene smiled in near-tearful  relief as Inez removed her trunk from her pocket and regrew it to full size. For a prefect, the younger girl observed, her guide was quite awfully twitchy. "There you are, then. The others will be up in a bit, I'm sure; there's always a bit of a round-table the first night back, down in the common room, and since tomorrow's Saturday and there are no classes, it's likely to go on awhile. You're welcome, of course; everyone is, but since you said you were so tired, I thought I'd show you where you'll end up first, just in case."

"Obrigada," Inez said, for what felt like the hundredth time that night. "You are sure no one will be offended if I..." She gestured to the bed.

"No, no. Of course not. You rest, and I'll give you the tour first thing, if you don't mind joining me and the first years?"

Inez smiled. "Not at all," she said in her best reassuring tones. "I look forward to it." Darlene turned toward the door... Then turned back abruptly, as if making a sudden decision before she could change her mind.

"Look," she said, and stopped. "Can I call you Inez?'

'Yes, of course."

"I don't care," the prefect said. "I really don't, but a lot of people will. So I'm just going to put it out there, and I'm sorry if I'm offending you with it, but... Are you by any chance a Muggleborn?"

There was a slight, unpleasant pause.

"Yes," Inez said flatly. "I am."

"Bugger," the older girl mumbled, and hastily, at the affronted look... "No, no. Really, I don't care, honestly. Only it's..." She tugged at her lank hair anxiously. "Only we all saw what happened downstairs, right? They way everyone was staring at you all evening after you took off your…” She nodded to the cap. “And Riddle's never really paid much - well, any - attention to any girl in particular before. For him to make a comment like that... You're going to want to watch yourself, alright? Only you're an ISEP student, and if you're a Muggleborn too... His crowd... They might think that since you're going back at the end of the year, there won't be any repercussions, see, if..."

She stopped again, and took a deep breath.

"There's a lot of anxiety yet," she said. Her voice was not quite steady.  "Around what happened here last year. They almost closed the school down over it. And nobody really liked Myrtle, she was a complete drip, but the Slytherins - and Riddle's in charge down there, make no mistake - wouldn't have cared if she was the Queen of Sheba, Helen of Troy and Morgana combined. She was a Muggleborn, so in their minds... She never, and would never have, under any circumstances... Mattered."

Inez sat down on the edge of her bed, watching her closely. Darlene sat opposite, hands clenched tightly in her lap.

"Somebody's got to tell you how things are here," she said again. "And I'm a prefect, so it's down to me, right?"

"I suppose it is. Go on."

Darlene Tuft braced herself.

"The teachers here,” she said. “They don't like to get involved in student disputes, especially when Riddle is involved. They all either worship him, or they're afraid of him. His Head of House, Slughorn, the Potions professor... He's both completely enamoured and completely petrified there.  And since he - Riddle, that is - can bloody do no wrong in Dippet's eyes, and Dippet's the Headmaster...  We’re all pretty much on our own when it comes to protecting ourselves from… Everything.”

“What about Professor Flitwick?” Inez asked, decidedly taken aback. “He is our Head of the House; is he not mindful of his charges?’

“Yes and no? He's really nice, and always good to talk to if you’re homesick or something, but he won't be of any help with the other because he's young, and has only taught here for a couple of years. He’s also part goblin, so that type, Riddle's type, don't respect him much. He's got his own problems dealing with them for the fact, and he can handle them alright, but it means he's pretty focused.”

Inez said nothing more.

"Just... be careful, alright?" Darlene said anxiously again. "And for Merlin's sweet sake, do not, _do_ not, go wandering the dungeons alone. Ever. That's standard school policy for all girls at Hogwarts these days, but he's noticed you. _Openly."_

"All men notice me openly, Miss Tuft. I am hardly inexperienced with his kind, I promise you."

"Just call me Darlene. Riddle has no kind," the other girl said bluntly. "He's _one_ of a kind. And not, _not_ in any good way. I'm telling you now, you'd best watch your back, because again. Not one of the teachers here is going to do it for you."

"I do not think..." Inez began.

"You're from South America," Darlene cut her off, hard. "But you still know about acromantulas, right?" Inez wrinkled her nose at her.

"Of course," she said cautiously. "Why do you ask?'

"Have you ever read any descriptions of, or seen any photos or drawings of, the bodies of people who were killed there?"

"Yes. It is quite gruesome."

"Mm. Well, you saw Myrtle tonight. We all did. Ghost's bodies reflect the state of their mortal bodies as they were when they died, yeah? How did she look to you? You notice any blackening there, or swelling, or split and leaking limbs, or bits of webbing hanging off her?"

".... No?"

"Think about that," Darlene advised grimly. "And then think about the fact that Tom Riddle was awarded an award for special services to the school for being the one who discovered the identity of the kid responsible for her death, _and_ the species and location of the monster he was purportedly hiding in the school that did her in."

Inez' eyes widened. "You are not saying..."

"She was a drip, but she was _murdered,_ and it's as clear as the nose on your face now - openly so - that it wasn't by any great bloody man-eating spider. And that's the official story, on all the books, but let me tell you something else, no one - _no_ one, even if she haunts Hogwarts for a thousand years - is ever going to take public notice of the contradictions there. No student, no teacher, no government official... _It's not going to happen_ , because it was Tom bloody buggering Riddle who saved the bloody day."

Inez digested that.

"The boy," she said at last. "The one who was charged..."

"He did hide a couple of acromantulas in the school. Little ones; babies, really, but still. Bit of a nutter him; essentially harmless, I think, but because he was half giant, never mind a Gryffindor, he just didn't have the natural fear or worry on that kind of creature as we pure humans do. He just... Didn't get it. He honestly thought... Well. Never mind what he thought. Anyway, he was expelled for it, of course, as well he should have been - but it wasn't his acromantulas that got Myrtle. That.. That was something else entirely. And now he's facing murder charges for a crime he didn't commit, or would be facing them if he weren't just thirteen, and as it is, he's going to be stuck down the DMLE till he's of age, and that's only if they decide he's reformed at the end of it. If they decide he isn't... They'll ship him off straight to Azkaban, and sure as Godric made little red lions,  he won't ever be seen or heard of ever again."

And didn’t _that_ last sound all too familiar.  She should have expected it, really… The earth _was_ round after all, Inez thought, and all trouble was just _bound_ to wash around, regardless of the size of the intervening oceans.

"And in the meantime, the monster is still out there?" was all she asked. "Or rather… In here?"

"Yes. He is. Never mind the thing that actually killed Myrtle." The older girl slid to her feet. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to give you nightmares your first night here, but you need to know. And you're a Muggleborn. And he's _noticed_ you."

"I will be careful. I promise."

Inez watched the other girl leave then, thoughtfully, and slipped down and went to her trunk, rummaging through for the soft shift she slept in. Clothes and robes flew into her closet, and books to her shelf as she undressed, and washed and cleaned her teeth in the adjacent bathroom. By the time everything was neatly arranged, she was tucked into the bed, the curtains closed and locked firmly about her and  sealed tight from all angles. Inside the little haven, bright light suddenly glowed, lighting the space as if it were high noon... Not a speck spilled out beyond.

She waved her wand for the last time that day. The inner curtains and the underside of the canopy, as well as the sheets and blankets, all turned pale yellow and ivory. She lay back, tucking her wand under her pillow and pulling a second item out in its place: a strand of fifty nine beads, set at regulated intervals, with a small attached gold cross. Exhausted as she was, and no matter her teeming and agitated brain, the accompanying ritual worked its particular sweet magic... Before she had finished the first set of ten prayers, Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez was sound asleep.


	2. Callida

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The verses that Antonio quotes below are from Pablo Neruda's 'The Queen'.
> 
> https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-queen-5/
> 
> F/M relations, graphic, be warned!

**Sunday, September 3rd, 1944**

**7.45 A.M.**

Whatever might be said about the Silva boys and their tendency to melodrama - and it _was_ said, and had been said for generations now, across all of South America - there was no doubt but that they knew how to work it. Inez sat at the breakfast table early on her first Sunday morning at Hogwarts, nibbling on a slice of toast and watching, much entertained, as her just-received missive from Castelobruxo, a crystal cube featuring a recording of Antonio’s soft, sultry voice, veritably caressed the auditory senses of the rapt and sighing feminine masses. The average Ravenclaw, the young woman was finding, was not particularly inclined toward the overt romantic, but her lover’s seductive tones and melodic accents were providing more than enough scope for the collective exception. It was at least triply effective since there was poetry involved.

Triply effective, and altogether deliberate. Antonio might be a firm advocate of interpersonal public propriety, but he was still a Latino for all that, and there had never been a Latino born who could tolerate the thought of other men interfering with his woman.

“It is petty of me, I know,” he’d confessed the night before she’d left. They were lying together, entwined and flushed yet with the heat of their lovemaking, on the warded platform they’d built together high in the jungle canopy near his family’s home in Manaus. Inez’ parents lived in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, but she had come to spend the  final week before leaving South America with the Silvas, in north-central Brazil. She was to catch a portkey from there  to the east coast of the continent the next morning, and (after the requisite numbers of hours to brace herself) would make the intercontinental jump to Sierra Leone before undertaking the final shorter series through Madrid and Paris to her penultimate destination in Dublin.  “And I do trust you, _amorinha_ ; never question that. I simply do not trust _them_. I am one of them, after all, and I know exactly how they all think.”

“I know,” Inez assured him.  “Truly, you need not worry. If any of them offer to introduce me to their snakes, I shall simply introduce them to the competition.”

“I appreciate the thought more than you know, but that is not exactly practical. Never mind that Jesus would not approve.”

“What, of me defending myself against the lustful incursions of the improperly minded hordes?”

“No. Of you risking alteration, or the alteration of your parents.”

Inez flinched hard. Her young lover’s typically dancing eyes were soft and sober: dark, troubled and utterly, if painfully resolved. She had never known, or would know, she thought, even through her pain, a man so courageous as Antonio-Maria Silva in his dedication to truth. He was kind, so kind, always, but he was simply not equipped on any level to spare anyone there, even - maybe especially - her. She tried to pull away, to spare them both, but...

"No. _No.  Look_ at me, Inez!”  He took her by the chin and forced her to look at him. “It must be said. _It must be said,_ and you must _listen_!  You _know_ the government would not take kindly to your provoking of an international incident, and as terrible as you may think it of me to say it, you are the only Magical in your family now.  If there is trouble, and the government were to be  reprimanded by its representatives in the ICW for  your loss of control, and their lack of control over you… It would be a simple matter, so simple, to adjust your family’s memories of their daughters to include the loss of one more as your punishment. Perhaps even their memory of you altogether. And without the memory of you… There would be no logical reason, would there, to allow them their continued awareness of the Magical world? They know exactly how powerful you are, _vidha_ , from their reports from the school’s  Board of Governors, and just how much of an asset you will be in the future, and they will threaten you with whatever it takes - _whatever_ it takes - to keep you under their control.  And if they truly deem it necessary… They will _do_ whatever it takes!”

Still, Inez said nothing. Sixteen-year-old Antonio Silva sighed as he released her and rolled on his side, stroking her sweaty storm of hair back with his always-cool fingers. She closed her eyes as he bent his dark head, and allowed him to kiss and caress the tears away with his lips, and to touch her lips with his.

 _Yo te he nombrado reina_ , he whispered against her mouth.

_Hay más altas que tú, más altas._

_Hay más puras que tú, más puras._

_Hay más bellas que tú, hay más bellas._

_Pero tú eres la reina…_.

Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez had never been quite as helplessly susceptible to her beloved’s poetic bent as she allowed him to believe, but since, for the most part, he simply couldn’t help himself - he was as much a natural romantic as he was a teller of uncomfortable truths - she had never been against indulging his instincts there either. That being said, the particular poem was not so much an exercise in romance but a running joke between them, offered now, she knew, to distract them both.

“Taller, I will give you,” she conceded magnanimously as she always did, eyes yet closed, and felt his lips tilt against hers as her reward. “And purer… Well.” She propped herself on her elbow and  looked down at her own lush, naked body. “That is all there is to be said about _that_. But… _Lovelier?”_ She sniffed in mock affront.

“I did not write the poem, _amorinha_ . Do not blame me for Neruda’s lack of ability to properly transcribe a verse so obviously inspired by our great God as a descriptive of you.”

Inez, despite herself, couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.  He kissed her a bit more, but it was conciliatory and apologetic rather than passionate, and even though they both knew that he would not - no, _could_ not - have let her go without saying the words… Even though, even so… _She_ would not  - no, could not, in turn -  leave such courage as that horrible little sermon had taken unacknowledged.

“I do not think you are terrible for saying it,” she said quietly. “It is the truth. It is…” She blinked back tears uselessly, and rolled to face him, and pressed against him. “It is good to know that He has sent me, in the middle of this hell, a man kind enough to remind me of the truth.”

“I love you, Inez-Constanzia Gutierrez de Hernandez.” Antonio gathered her up and held her close. “That is the truth too. And I am not complaining on His goodness either, considering the kindness He has shown me in sending me you.”

“You are a lucky man,” Inez agreed, against his shoulder.. “I expect letters, _vidha_. Many, many, many letters. And recordings of you reciting poetry and pining over my absence so that I may play them  for all of the girls and laugh as they and their boys realize how absolutely inadequate European men are in romantic comparison.”

“Mm.” He pulled back, his eyes dancing once again. “Perhaps we should ponder the possibilities further, as you offer me further inspiration?”

And that, insofar as the particular conversation was concerned, was all there was to be said about _that_. Inez rolled him on his back and threw a leg over him…  His eyes half-closed , but she only slid back a bit, sitting astride his thighs as she ran a finger down his chest, and up again, touching the small gold cross on the slender gold chain. It had been his grandfather’s,  she knew, the only thing found of him beside his wand, and bestowed upon Antonio as his eldest grandson when he had been lost two years ago. He flexed and took it off, neatly, and slipped it over her head.

“Antonio, no!” she protested.  “It was your _avo’s!_ ”

“You may return it,” he said. “Not to me, Inezinha, but to our own first son.” He caught her up and kissed her, hard. She pressed her body against his, raising herself... He reached between them deftly, and she groaned heavily, sinking down as he slipped deep once more.

“Ah, Antonio… So good… ” Never a quiet lover, she threw her head back, crying out. He allowed her to control the pace, but after a moment, flipped her over on her hands and knees and settled on his own knees, seizing her hips and snapping his own hips smoothly forward as he drove quickly and hard again into her warm, sopping depths, over and over and over.

 _“_ _Y cuando asomas_ ," he murmured. " _S_ _uenan todos los rios,"_  and he sat back on his dark heels,  digging his fingers deep as he hauled her bodily back over and around him… He  thrust, and thrust, and thrust again, bowing his head and closing his eyes as if in prayer as he hauled back and rocked forward simultaneously. Inez cursed and swore as he paused a moment to adjust his position, but only for a moment as  he bent over her back, balancing himself on one hand and reaching around to palm and squeeze her breasts roughly, well past the point of pain…  Antonio was actually quite aware that Inez humoured his poetic impulses, but that being the case he was quite willing to adapt his passions to match and complement hers... Compromise, as his father had always told his sons, was not so much an exercise in placating one's woman as it was its own inevitable and enjoyable reward, and as hearts and flowers, Inez informed him bluntly after their first rather frustrating month as lovers were, in her opinion, best indulged in outside the bedroom...

He'd been anxious after their first explorations of each other just a year ago now, and yes, irritated at her complete indifference to his every earnest, gentle and careful attempt to satisfy her - he’d done his _research_ after all, even if it was purely theoretical research -  but had eventually demanded (and more a bit snidely, he was embarrassed to admit in retrospect) further and explicit instruction.... She’d had, after all, no more practical experience than he. What she _did_ have, as it turned out, was a very, very vivid imagination, as self-practiced a hand as any student  that had ever explored their own animal instincts at Castelobruxo, and  an extremely concise and pithy way of expressing herself. Once he’d internalized the finer implications of her long-trending fantasies, and his eyebrows had returned to their proper position...

_e n mi cuerpo, sacuden_

_el cielo las campanas,_

_y un himno llena el mundo._

She had not a docile bone in her body, she’d told him in no uncertain terms, and would never submit to any man, but that being said...

Antonio left off her breasts and slid his hand down abruptly, grabbing, squeezing, delving in and pinching _hard_. Her screams of lust  nearly raised the roof of the canopy.  If he’d been less athletic or less magically talented, she might very well have sent him sprawling, but he was neither… He was agile and lithe, preternaturally strong for his size, and thanks to his talent for wandless magic, had no need for any other tool than the one God had given him to work with. Her knees slipped out from under her, and her hands too, and she was spreadeagled  flat on her belly and he was over her, pinning her magically again as he hammered  her so hard his hips would ache in the morning. He fisted her hair and yanked her head to the side and kissed her savagely between soft, sweet murmured words, punctuating the last, _at_ the last, with a deep, near-bloody bite in her delicate, soft and rounded shoulder.

_Solo tu y yo,_

_solo tu y yo, amor mio,_

_lo escuchamos...._

He collapsed heavily over, slipping not off of her, but down only a bit so he could rest his dark head on her shoulder blade… She lay limp, breathing quite as hard as she’d screamed, and felt his lips turn up slightly again against her back as a cool finger traced the bruising and teeth marks on her shoulder itself and healed them cleanly and seamlessly. More soft, murmured words sounded in her ears, and she felt a full body tingle from top to toe, easing off gradually along with any and all evidence of even the smallest bruise he’d left on her... Eventually, he released the spell holding her. She heaved a bit, he rolled off and they both lay quietly, arms outstretched, hands entwined.

“ _Muito bueno_ ,” she congratulated him at last. “That was quite nice.”

He snorted, and snapped his fingers. The canopy parted above them as if by magic, and the platform rose and rose and rose… Higher and higher, till they were hovering high above the jungle itself, revolving slightly amid vast white and silver waves of starlight, in an incandescent sea that stretched from horizon to horizon. Inez rolled on her side. He rolled to face her.

“There are none before you and none after you who can replace you,” she said to him. “If you are lost, I will not forget you. I will remember you always.”

Antonio Silva lifted her hand, and kissed each fingertip, and the palm.

“Antonio,” she said.

"Yes?"

“You are not to be lost while I am away. I forbid it, do you understand? I will be very upset with you if you are, and I will yet remember you, but I shall never speak to you again.”

“I have no intention of being lost, _minha rainha._ No shadow will ever take me from you. The only One - the _only_ One - with the power to do that is God. And even then, I would tell Him that He would have to concede your claim, and wait for you to loose my hand and place it in His.”

“Well, then.” She slid over. He cast  cooling and cleaning charms on them both, and they settled comfortably. “When is your mother expecting us back?”

“She has informed me that Jesus will be quite disappointed in us if she comes to wake us for breakfast and we are not each securely in our own beds.”

“And what time is breakfast again?”

“It is most inadvisable to eat on the day you are scheduled to take an intercontinental portkey, I understand. And I am pining for you already, in that most romantic fashion where one completely loses one’s appetite or inclination to do anything but sigh over the far-flown beloved.”

“So…”

“Seven,” he translated. “And she said to bring avocado, _pitaya_ , plantains, pineapple and fresh fish, and none of it from the markets.”

“Is the food at Hogwarts truly that bad, do you think?” she said dubiously. “I have heard the reports from former ISEP students, but it just does not seem possible.”

“I am sorry to point out the correlation, _amorinha,_ but every single ISEP student in the history of Castelobruxo who has gone to Hogwarts and returned at Christmas instead of at the end of the year has stated specifically that it was _because_ of the food.”

 _“Vixi Maria._ And with the rationing too…”

“There is no actual rationing at the school.” He patted her rear comfortingly. “They have a great number of gardens there, I understand, and did even before the war started, and there are always the mermen and the centaurs besides,  if you are feeling that truly desperate. It would seem only logical that  the top halves alone would count as human, mm?”

She swatted him. His eyes danced at her in the starlight. “I will be fine,” she said. “There are any number of non-magical animals in the Forest as well, I hear.  Deer, rabbits…” She paused.

“Yes?” he encouraged. “Go on. Deer, rabbits...”

“I am going to a wasteland.” She fell back in dismay. “And I do not even _like_ rabbit!”

“No? You quite enjoyed it before you Changed.”

“The ears stick in my throat now, and I cough up the tails besides. They are small and round and fluffy, and they tickle.”

Antonio threw back his head and roared.

* * *

 

The cube had appeared beside her coffee cup, and she’d tucked it into her pocket to play later, when she had a private moment. Or at least she’d intended to tuck it in her pocket... Ravenclaw  had not adopted the sharp-eyed eagle as her mascot for nothing, and no sooner had her fingers touched it, then…

“What’ve you got there?” a first year sitting directly across from her inquired perkily.  Her name was Callida Burgess-Waites, and she was a near-unprecedented oddity at Hogwarts: the only female student of her incoming year Sorted into her House. Even there, she seemed bit of a fish out of water; bright but not, from the bits Inez had gathered of her, seeming terribly inclined to academics, and with a charming habit of strewing tiny, exquisitely folded origami animals in her wake.  “Ooh, is that one of those new missive-cubes? The ones that you use to record your voice?”

“Yes,” Inez confirmed. “It is.” Callida sat up poker-straight, the soft sweep of freckles on her summer-burnt nose fairly popping in excitement. She had a sweet, not-quite-homely little face, almost perfectly triangular, with thick, silky pale brown hair cut in a chin-length bob and a very nearly unholy interest in a) life at Castelobruxo, and b) Inez’ life in particular, particularly the bits involving Antonio. Her housemates tolerated her well enough so far, but that, the girl had informed her, wasn’t really reflective of their native goodwill.

“It’s all down to _my_ boyfriend,” she told Inez as she trotted beside her on their way down to breakfast that morning. She’d been lying in wait in the common room when Inez emerged from her room in order to present herself as her escort, handing over a tiny folded rabbit to seal the deal. Inez was so hungry she was tempted to transfigure the offering into the real thing and stuff it in whole, tails and ears notwithstanding. “Only he’s a bit of a big deal down in Slytherin, so nobody from any of the Houses is going to bother me, even if my granny _was_ a Muggle.”

“Was she?” Inez inquired. “And… Dare I ask?”

“She was. She was a _stage_ actress. From New _York._ She met my grandpa after a show, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’. She played the heroine, Mabel, and Grand-dad came backstage after the show and was so stricken by her beauty that the only thing he could say was that she’d got the English accent all wrong. She smacked his head with the roses he brought her, but she didn’t really mean it, and he invited her out for dinner to apologize. When they got there, she told him he mumbled a lot, even if his accent was authentic, and said he needed diction lessons. So they swapped, and after a week, he told her he was a wizard, which broke practically every law they have in the States, and he nearly got put in gaol for it even if he was just visiting from England, but he didn’t because his dad paid off MACUSA. And then he brought her home, because he wanted to marry her but he couldn’t in the States because they don’t understand the magic that is true love over there at _all_.” She sniffed disapprovingly. “His family, they’re the Waiteses in Burgess-Waites, was just horrified, but they got over it eventually. Or, well, they didn’t, but…” She flipped a hand. “And it’s all worked out for me anyway because I’m  second-generation, which still qualifies me as a half-blood, but my kids’ll be pure, and that’s really all my boyfriend’s family cares about. Well, that, and breeding out the inherent nutterness that half the Purebloods risk with every generation again.”

“Nutterness,” Inez repeated.

“Nut-ter-ness,” the girl enunciated. “ _Your_ accent’s completely brilliant. Does everyone where you come from have it?”

Inez’ laugh pealed out. Loudly.  Her  tour of the castle yesterday morning with Darlene and the other first years had been entertaining enough, though the anxiety-ridden prefect had been more than a bit wild-eyed at the sight of the no-fewer-than- _nine_ eleven year old boys presenting themselves for the cartography expedition, but in the end, they had been no trouble at all. Callida had asked more questions than all of them put together, and her witty, shrewd humour and constant blithely rattling commentary had reminded Inez sharply of Antonio’s favourite brother, Manuel. She even looked a bit like him, in build anyway, thin and lanky with the height and bones that promised utter elegance in maturity, if not traditional beauty.

“They do,” she confirmed. “Variations on it, anyway. And… I do not quite understand. You are saying that your marriage has already been arranged? You are eleven!”

“Twelve, next week. I was born on September 8th, so I’m one of the older first-years. And yes, though since nothing can really be finalized till I’m fourteen, we’re just contracted to  a period of exclusive consideration.. That’s just words though; everyone knows what it means. Only that’s how it works here, in the old families, and never mind Granny again, Grand-dad and my dad again come from really politically-connected rich people, and my mum … Well. She’s a Burgess, of the Brighton Burgesses, and that doesn’t mean anything to _you_ , I know, but trust me, it does to everybody else. Even the goblins are nice to her when she goes into the bank, can you imagine? So the Purebloods are all willing to blink for the chance of marrying off one of their boys to someone like me because I come with all the status and connections and galleons, as long as I don’t talk too much about Granny, anyway. Which is easy enough, because most of them are great bloody buggering gits, and I don’t want to talk to them about anything.”

“Do you not mind that your life has been arranged for you so precisely?” Inez inquired, fascinated. Callida shrugged.

“No,” she said. “I have to marry someone, and he’s pretty enough, even if he is a bit of a plonker when he’s around his friends. I reckon he’s nice enough to me when we’re alone and with our families, and after what happened here last year he came over for tea to talk to me specially, and told me to try to for another House than Slytherin  when I got here, because there are a lot of plonkers there, and he’s a big deal, but not the biggest, and the biggest has some funny ideas on half-bloods even if he’s a half-blood himself, with a parent - not just a grandparent, but a parent - who was Muggle.  I didn’t ask him what he meant when he said ‘funny ideas’, only it’s kind of obvious, really, but he _was_ really nice about it, and said ‘Don’t worry, Callida, I might not talk to you at school, but it doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means I can’t.’ And I told him he needs to learn to stand up to his friends if they’re that big of plonkers, and tell them off when they’re stupid, but he’s not very good at standing up to people, I’ve noticed. Mum doesn’t like him very much. It’s a good match and all, politically speaking, but she says that no one in the history of his family ever stood up for anybody or anything on the personal level, they just lean _against_ their stacks of gold and _on_ their political connections. But I said maybe he’s different; maybe he just needs a bit of encouragement. And I’m good at that. Encouraging people, I mean. Also, at behaving properly when I’m around people who care. That’s Granny’s influence, Mum says, at acting again. So I’m nice and proper when I’m around people who mind, which is pretty much everybody here from what I see, but you don’t seem to care what people think, so when I want to be me, I’ll just come talk to you. Would that be alright?”

“I would like that very much.” Inez smiled down at her.

“Brilliant.” The girl stuck her hand out promptly. Inez took it firmly and shook it. “Are we friends, then? I mean, do you want to be, even if I am only twelve next week, and you’re sixteen?”

“I do. And I will say now what we say at home, when we make a new friend, and then you will say it back. I will remember your name, Callida Burgess-Waites, if you will remember mine.”

“I will remember your name, Inez Hernandez,” Callida Burgess-Waites said. “If you will remember mine. _Brilliant!_ Here. Have a turtle.” She’d passed off a tiny folded tortoise. “I can make you whatever you like there. Only you must really miss all of the animals in the jungle. I would, if I left there and had to come here. Do you?”

“A few of them, _sim_. Some are not terribly amiable. May I ask the name of your boyfriend?” Inez inquired as they entered the Great Hall. Callida stood on her toes, craning her neck.

“That’s him over there.” She pointed.  “Sitting with the rest of the seventh years, and his friends, who looks like he’s half-asleep. He probably is. He never wakes up properly till after his first class, and he wouldn’t be up early today at all since classes don’t start till tomorrow, only he has early Quidditch practice. The Slytherins are really big on Quidditch. Well, everyone here is, but the Slytherins are just obsessed. _I_ reckon it’s the stupidest game ever invented, myself.  It’d be a lot better if they left the Snitch out and stopped the whole thing after two hours, and whoever got the most points wins, and then everybody goes off for lunch. Also, they should take out the bludgers. They’re just not safe. Do you play Quidditch, Inez?”

“I do. I am a Chaser. Wait, you are engaged to a _seventh_ year?”

“He won’t be a seventh year forever. And neither will I, will I? Twelve and seventeen’s a big difference, but seventeen and twenty two really isn’t.”

“Mmhmm. And what is his name again?”

“Abraxas,” Callida Burgess-Waites told her. “Abraxas Malfoy. Dead stupid name, Abraxas. He thinks so too, but it’s a family name so what can you do, he told me, and I just call him Brax when we’re away from Hogwarts. And if we ever have a son, we’ve got to name him according to the family list too, can you imagine? No options allowed there, at least not for the boys. He’ll be Lucius. Lucius Abraxas Malfoy. That’s a dead stupid name too, but I can always call him Luke. That’s a nice name, and I’ll make sure _he_ marries a girl who’ll call him that too, and won’t just go by what everyone else thinks is proper manners. What are you going to call your son with Antonio, if you marry him?”

“We have not talked about it. We shall have to think on it a great deal when the time comes, since do not name people after other people in South America. We believe that everyone is unique and deserves their own name, so that if they are lost and others are remembering them, they do not get them confused with anyone else.”

“Lost where?” Callida wanted to know as they seated themselves.

“Anywhere. There are as many ways to lose oneself, and each other, as there are people in the world.”

“This is very true,” Callida conceded, and as she’d reached for the scrambled eggs, the letter-cube had sparkled into existence beside Inez’ cup.

“Is it from Antooooonio?” her new friend asked loudly after confirming its nature and purpose, and collapsed, sniggering into her plate, quite overwhelmed by her own wit. Quiet as the Great Hall was that early on a Sunday morning again, heads swiveled so rapidly and sharply from all directions that Inez was surprised she didn’t hear bones crack.

“It is,” she said again.

“Why didn’t it come by owl?”

“Because it is coming in through the ISEP mailing network. It is a special adapted floo connection that links all of the schools involved in the program,  and each participating student is permitted to select a fellow student from whom they receive, and to whom they may send mail. Only twice a week, but it is instantaneous, no matter the distance, and there is no weight limit, so Antonio plans to collect the letters from all of my friends and family and send them through in a packet on the first of each month, while sending his own letters and cubes the rest of the time.”

“Brilliant,” Callida pronounced yet again, and stuffed in a huge wadded ball of buttered toast with blueberry jam. “L’hri’n.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She swallowed thickly. “I said, let’s hear it then.  I want to hear what he sounds like.”

“Perhaps later, once  I have listened to it first?  No, do not argue. _Vixi Maria,_ what have they done with these poor potatoes?”

“What’s wrong with them?” The younger girl prodded at a browned cube.  It dissolved beneath her fork into a pale watery sludge. “Oh. Urgh. Maybe I should ask Brax to have a word with the house-elves. Only they are a little over-cooked, aren’t they?” She paused suddenly. “Does it bother you that I talk so much? Brax doesn’t; he kind of likes it, I think, as long as I keep it for when we’re not in public anyway. I can restrain myself, really; it’s just that there’s no one up in the Tower to talk to. Only I didn’t expect, exactly, to be the only girl in my year there. Bit weird, having that great bloody room all to myself;  I kind of echo there, you know? Every time I turn around quick and see myself in the mirror, I get all excited, and I say hello-hello! but it’s only me after all.”

“I do understand, “ Inez said, and after a moment. “Do you know how to fold a bat, Callida? Not a tiny one, but one the size of my hand or so?”

"Course!” The girl brightened and dug into her robe pocket, removing several small pieces of origami paper. “You’ll have to make the paper bigger for me though.”

Inez obliged.  Callida’s fingers blurred… Less than two minutes later, it was done. Inez pulled out a pencil from her pocket and scribed neatly on the wing, charming it to soar up to the head table… It landed, fluttering and clinging, to the edge of Professor Flitwick’s hat. He reached up to detach it, and examined it, smiling and surprised. He glanced up and caught Inez’ eye, nodding once.

“What did you write to him?’ Callida demanded eagerly.

“I requested a meeting.” Inez tweaked her nose. “In his office, after breakfast. I will tell you about it after, perhaps.”

“Brilliant. Can you charm this to fly now?” She handed off a delicate ivory peacock. Inez picked it up and examined it. In tiny letters were printed on the wings -

**_Brax - Pls. stop by kitchens and ask  the HE to put out crunchier veg. Ours melt. BE NICE, NO YELLING OR PUNISHING ALLOWED. Also, tell your plonker friend to stop staring at Inez; only he's a bit creepy with it, and it’s rude besides, and not gentlemanly, even if she is really pretty. You’re really pretty, and you don’t see me staring at you, do you, because I have MANNERS. Also, like me, she has a boyfriend and isn’t a slag, so she won’t be wanting another one. You may inform him of that, categorically and unequivocally.  Yr. Intended, C.B.W_ **

Inez glanced over her shoulder. Across the hall, at Slytherin Table, just as they had been at every meal since her arrival Friday night, cold dark eyes stared at her unblinkingly… Her lips tightened in distaste, and she turned back, charming the peacock.. It fluttered across the hall and landed neatly on  the top of Abraxas Malfoy’s teapot. It fluttered back in prompt order, landing neatly on Callida’s shoulder. She tweaked it off, grinning as she read, and passed it over,

**_My Dear Miss Blither-Wit,_ **

**_I am, as always, your humble servant. Pls. refrain from informing the entire castle of the fact. I do have my detached, aloof, ne’er-do-well playwizard reputation to maintain. Am also supposed to be bored and irritated at the thought of being betrothed to a not-quite-twelve-year-old. Am doing my level best to maintain the facade, but am having some difficulty as it’s you._ **

**_May I say that the particular shade of blue, particularly when contrasted with the bronze, is utterly becoming? Jolly good show there, my dear. Mother and Publius are quite pleased. Money and Political Standing are all very well, but as we’ve not been able to find anyone with Actualized Intellect to breed into the family in generations now, I am simply a-quiver at the thought of how the trifecta might manifest in our eventual offspring. A-_ ** **quiver,** **_my dear!_ **

**_With all and most sincere affection,_ **

**_A.M._ **

“He does not seem completely repulsive,” Inez conceded.

“He’s not.” Callida tucked the peacock away, and returned to her stack of toast. “He’s also humouring me.”

“Oh?”

“He doesn’t want me to be mad at him when he doesn’t say anything to the plonker about his manners, so he’s kissing my arse so I won’t tell Mum he’s not holding up the side there. He needs me a lot more than I need him; girls like me aren’t exactly a sickle a dozen, like I said.  You’d best stick with me, Inez. I might be not-quite-twelve, but I’m the best protection you’ve got here at Hogwarts. If I tell my people I don’t want to marry Abraxas, they won’t make me, and he knows it. Everybody knows it. And this is the fourth generation in a row that the Malfoys have bred inside the Pureblood lines, and no matter what they say about Granny… They couldn’t have found someone more suitable for him, Brax that is, if his ancestors had ordered me up in anticipation. So sooner or later, he _will_ have to tell him to sod off just because I told him to, but just in case he doesn’t, or at least till he does, the more you’re seen with me, the safer you’ll be.”

“Is your family truly that powerful?”

“Power doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, in and of itself. It’s that people  - important people - _like_ my family, individually and collectively. Nobody really likes the Malfoys. They’ve got it all to be going on with, you’d think, but they’ve also got what Dad calls ‘negatively-focused charisma’.”

“And you are not worried on my sincerity, now that you have offered me your protection?”

“No,” Callida Burgess-Waites said calmly. “We shook on being friends before I ever told you any of this. It’s why I walked with you down here this morning, so that I could find out if you were nice before anybody told you who I am. And now when you go to talk to Professor  Flitwick about how you’re worried about me living by myself, and ask him if it would be possible to share a room with me since you’re by yourself too, even with five room-mates because you’re a Muggleborn ISEP student and the creepy plonker's gone and told everybody you belong to him, you’ll know I already know, and that all things considered, I think it’s the best thing all around.”

_“What?”_

“It was Professor Flitwick’s idea to start with. He came and talked to me yesterday night. He’s worried about you.  Really worried, but they manage things a certain way here at Hogwarts when it comes to disagreements among students, or at least he does, or tries to. And Darlene Tuft is a complete fraidy-mouse, and the plonker told her after our tour yesterday to find out about your family lines and she said she already knew because she’d asked you, and she told him so he won’t bother _her._ She’s a half-blood like me, but without the connections. So Professor Flitwick came, and he said he usually wouldn’t ask me, but after last year… He felt morally obliged, because it’s your safety.  And _them_ , and I already knew him before I came here, because he’s a bit of a big deal on the European dueling circuit, and the Waiteses are all enormous fans of dueling, and Dad made sure, quietly, that he’s got judged fairly over the years, and not on his size or ancestry. There are a lot of people, you know, who thought he should be banned from dueling altogether because he’s got a bit of goblin in him, and they say that means he shouldn’t be allowed to use magic at all, much less the other, because goblins aren’t. Mostly those are the people who know they’ll lose if they fight him, though, so… Yeah.”

“And you said yes?”

“I said yes _conditionally_. I wanted to talk to you a bit more first, on our own. But now that I’ve met you properly, and we’re friends, I’ll go to your meeting with you and we’ll sort it all out.”

Inez digested that, if not her breakfast - and skidded to an abrupt halt on a suddenly recalled phrase.

“Correct me if I am mistaken,” she said. “But did you just say that Tom Riddle told his housemates that I _belong_ to him?’

“Yep.”

“And I do not suppose you were paraphrasing?”

“Fraid not.”

Inez examined the crystal cube still in her hand, and pressed the facet decisively, casting a simultaneous _Sonorus_. Callida (and the few others there who were there at that hour) nearly fell off their benches when a musical, soft and quintessentially sultry male voice sounded, positively dripping with exotic sensuality as it offered her greetings.

 _“Hola_ , Inezinha,” Antonio Silva said. The translation charm he’d placed on the cube - his English was, if not poor, extremely difficult to understand due to his heavy accent - helped things along considerably, without sacrificing one iota of the vocal impact. “See, I have kept my promise, and here it is; your first missive from me, posted before the first weekend is out, mm?”

“Holy _crackers_ !” Callida said inelegantly (and loudly). “That’s _him?_ Your boyfriend? No, don’t turn it _off!_ I want to hear more!”

“I must say,” the recording continued. “That this is a most…” There was a pause. “ _Unfulfilling_ method of communication, but…” A deep, sad and patently theatrical sigh sounded. “It would seem that this year away is God’s will for you, and that is all there is to be said about _that._ Still. I am a man in most passionate love with his woman, and no matter the distance or oceans between us, I have no intention of allowing you for one moment to believe, or to fear otherwi…” There was a crackle, and a blithe, distant cackle, and the voice returned. “ _Desculpe-me_. One moment, please. _Nao_ , Manuel; I will not look at your Astronomy assignment. You may bring it to me after dinner, but at this moment,  I am recording a letter for Inez, and  if you do not leave me in peace, I shall transfigure you into a bludger and take my bat here and beat you with it.”

“INEZ!” a blithe, raucous voice hailed. “YOU MUST COME HOME, INEZ! NOW! ANTONIO SAYS THAT HE  IS GOING TO BEAT ME, HEH, AND YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE ABLE TO PROTECT ME!”

“She will not protect you, you great _bandar-log_ ,” Antonio’s voice said. “If only because you would require her protection. Women desire a man that they may respect: who is able to protect them, even when - _especially_ when - they truly have no need of the assistance.  And if I may say so as your elder brother... You will never find a woman of your own if you so openly admit that you are the kind of man who cannot manage without one?”

“You are not managing without yours,” Manuel pointed out. “You have been altogether pathetic since the moment she left Manaus.”

“ _Pobrecito_. You truly know nothing of love, do you. Allow me to educate you. You must prove yourself able to manage without a woman so that  you may _find_ one. Then, and _only_ then, may you tell her that your heart is as a desolate wasteland in her absence. If you are as blessed as I it will only be the truth, and _in_ truth and at that point, you should consider it your  obligation to offer forth such consolations anyway. She most certainly will.”

There was another pause.

“And they will not question your sincerity, since it is truly their idea in the first place?” It sounded genuinely tentative.

“ _Nossa Senhora_. You are not only a brainless _bandar-log_ , you are disgrace to the name of Silva. It is a good thing that there are five more of us this generation, or my poor children will be destined to grow up completely without cousins. Go away, Manuelinho. Thus am I filled with despair on all counts, and I must quote poetry at Inez now so she will not listen to you  and lose faith in our gender’s romantic instincts altogether. As things are, she is in Europe now, surrounded on all sides by the inherently stilted and repressed, and she will need all the reminding I am able to manage.”

Inez sniggered. Loudly. There was a muffled yelp from the cube. another laugh, and the sound of a slamming door.

“ _Mil perdoes_ , _amorinha_. He is gone now. Now, as I was saying…” The soft sensual tones deepened even further..  Inez flicked the facet.  Wild feminine protests sounded from all sides, and not just from Callida or Ravenclaw Table either.

“Who’s the second boy?” one of the Gryffindor fourth-years demanded.

“He is Antonio’s younger brother,” Inez said. “Manuel. He is in his third year.  He is very sweet, and we get along very well, as I do with all of their family. They are quite wonderful people.”

“Are his parents Muggles too?” Callida asked. “Like yours?”

“We call them Nomaji rather than Muggles, and I am sure I could not say,” Inez said pleasantly. “As no one where I come from considers it of any particular importance, I have never asked.”

“But..” Her nose wrinkled, genuinely confused. “He’s your boyfriend! And they’re his parents! How can you not _know?_ ”

“The Silvas, as a family, tend toward natural wandless magic.” She did not moderate her tone. “Very, very few of them truly require the external focal point, past the point. Whenever I have visited them, there are people everywhere - they are a large family - and indications of magic all about. I would not be able to tell who was the source of any particular charm or spell there even if I tried.”

“Huh. Alright then.”

Less than half an hour later, the two girls were sitting in Professor Flitwick’s office. Callida fairly bounced on the edge of her chair as she waited for the final decree.

“It will work out well, I think,” Flitwick said in his squeaky little voice. “Though I am sorry, Miss Hernandez, for the necessity.” Inez waved him off.

“I do not mind at all,” she said. “In truth, I am quite pleased. The extra room to work on my ongoing projects for my final year at Castelobruxo will be very helpful, and insofar as the finer details are concerned... I think _Senhorita_ Burgess-Waites just might prove an able assistant there.”

“Me? But I can’t do the kind of magic you’re talking yet!”

“There is magic and then there is magic,” her new room-mate said. “You will understand once I show you. You are sure that there will be no problems over the administrative details, Professor?’

“You’re Ravenclaw’s only ISEP student this year, Miss Hernandez, and yours has not been the only request for a meeting since you arrived."

"Uh?"

“He's talking about your year-mates again. They’re all scared now,” Callida informed her. “Of having you sleeping in with them. Because they’re stupid.” She patted Inez’ arm. “Do you snore?”

“No.” Inez laughed. “I do like to sleep with my curtains shut, though. I am not terribly fond of the dark, and I like to keep the interior well lit.”

“Why don’t you like the dark? Only, I don’t mind, and I’m not making fun, but if you wouldn’t mind telling me…”

Inez ran a hand through her curls. Professor Flitwick said nothing. He knew, of course, or likely thought he did… Her ISEP application had been presented long after the deadline, after all, and had been granted on compassionate grounds.

“I had a twin sister,” she said at last. “Till the beginning of the summer. She was murdered. Since then, I do not like to sleep in the dark. I have fewer bad dreams with the light on.”

Callida’s blue eyes grew immediately enormous, shining with sudden tears and genuine distress.

“Oh, _Inez,_ ” she breathed. “Oh. _Oh._ I’m so sorry, I’m so _sorry_ ! And you were sorted into Ravenclaw, and the girl who died last year was _from_ Ravenclaw, and…”

“Myrtle.”

“Uh?”

“The girl who died here was named Myrtle. Myrtle Warren. It is important to remember the names of the lost, _Senhorita_ Burgess-Waites. To remember _them_.”

“She’s not lost. She’s in the second floor loo, when she isn’t haunting Olive Hornby anyway. Don’t you worry, not one bit. And you don’t have to keep your curtains closed either; you can keep all the lights in the whole room on if you like, for the whole year, even!  I’m not going to tell one person, and I _especially_  won’t tell them why.”  She took her hand. Hers was disproportionately long, and a bit wide for her wrist. Inez examined it and its fellow, more to distract herself than anything.

“You are going to be very tall,” she noted. “I am quite jealous.”

“Why? You’re just beautiful, just the way you are. No, you’re perfect.” She squeezed firmly.

Inez leaned in and kissed her cheek at that. Flitwick watched with a small smile.

“Come,” she said to the girl.  “You may help me pack my things, and then we will go outside by the lake and I will show you a few spells that I am quite sure that they do not teach here at Hogwarts.”

“Brilliant.” She slid down. “This is all just _brillian_ _t._ What kind of spells?”

“All sorts.”

“Would you mind if I came along, Miss Hernandez?” the little Charms professor asked. “I admit that you have my curiosity up now. And you don’t have to worry on your things; the house-elves can move them all in a jiffy. In fact…” He tapped the desk. “There you are.”

“ _Obrigada_. You are so kind. And I would be honoured.” They left the office, and headed for the first set of stairs... She struggled, but in the end… “Callida says that you have dueled professionally?”

“Mm. I've dabbled now and again, yes. Why do you ask?”

“I am quite good at Transfiguration,” Inez said. “My sister was equally good at Charms. At Castelobruxo, the fifth years have a tradition; we perform our final practical examinations in both before the school. This past year, she and I synchronized our two practicals, mine in Transfiguration, and hers in Charms, and we displayed our skills together. It was not truly a competition between us, more an exercise in showing how we worked best together, on all levels. There was a certain room for improvisation, and in the end… We were improvising everything to produce variations and to create spontaneous effects. It was wonderful.” She smiled a little wistfully. “She was not just my sister, she was as the second half of my soul, in all ways. And that day… It showed. To everyone. Everyone saw it. More than that though…  It was just…”

“Fun?” her Head of House suggested. She nodded. He patted her shoulder.

“Well then,” he said. “Since it’s such a bright sunshiny day and everyone’s outside anyway… Let’s go show those lazybones  in all of the other Houses what a few good, hard and dedicated study sessions can do for you besides raise your grades, shall we?” Callida whooped at that, and vaulted onto the banister of the final staircase, sliding all the way to the bottom… Just as she sprang off,  Inez flicked her wand at her. She squawked and flapped frantically, somersaulting in flight before the levitation spell caught her and helped her along… She landed in the front hall, transfigured back and her arms still outstretched as she scrambled for balance, lost it, and toppled straight into the center of a small crowd of Slytherins emerging from the dungeons.

“What,” her fiance said, setting her on her feet and tweaking her tie. “Do you think you are doing, Miss Burgess-Waites?”

“Inez Transfigured me into a pygmy owl!” she told him. “It was brilliant! She’s brilliant! I flew! Well, I sort of flew. She mostly just levitated me along with it, but it was completely _brilliant,_ Brax!!”

There was a sudden silence. She blinked around, confused... And as she realized what she'd done, clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified.

“Brax?” One of his compatriots sniggered. “She calls you _Brax_?”

“Erhm… I…” She suddenly looked very eleven, and in that moment, Inez’ heart broke for her. Despite her bravado and previous careless dismissal of the young man before her, the expression on Callida Burgess-Waite’s pointed little face was unmistakable. In all the history of all the countries of all the world, there could never have been a not-quite-twelve year old girl with a more obvious, hopeless and painful crush on the arrogant, elitist seventeen-year-old plonker that she just happened to be engaged to marry. Her eyes dropped miserably.

Abraxas Malfoy said nothing.  Inez wanted to kick him. Hard, and as she looked him over, she could see, now that she was closer, what a twelve-year-old would never see, and what a loving mother or older female relative-equivalent could never miss - the weak set of the mouth, all the more pronounced for the fact of his fine, elegant features,  the impeccable pale hands with the brutally short nails  trimmed to the quick against nervous and unsettled nibbling, the quick, darting glances around beneath the carefully drooping heavy lids,  and the way, when he caught the eyes of certain of his companions, he would jerk his chin high, ostensibly in a projected gesture of arrogance and to flick his long, groomed hair back from his face, but in actuality, to subconsciously bare his throat to an identified alpha.... She could almost feel her skin stretch, her eyes flattening, hooding over, even as the one clear word, the one clear thought rose from the dark, opaque depths within her.

_Prey._

She crushed the thought, and her instincts, back ruthlessly.

“And why should she not?” she said coolly. “The contracts of consideration between their families have been signed.  The time is not yet right for  marriage  but  an appropriate and developing level of warm familiarity between prospective husband and wife should be encouraged in the meantime, and signs of its progression applauded. They  demonstrate to the wider community solid hope, after all, not just for the health of their personal partnership and, as God wills it, their future family, but for the happy success of whatever mutual endeavors  they undertake in the future in support _of_ that wider community.”

Everyone blinked at her. Callida looked up at her, absolutely astonished, and back at Abraxas, every star in every constellation there was suddenly shining hopefully in her eyes. Whatever might be said about his personality and the state of his spine, Inez thought sourly, he was bright enough to seize a blatantly golden opportunity, never mind a silver-plattered social reprieve, when offered one.

“Well said, Miss Hernandez.” Abraxas Malfoy bowed to her with more than a touch of condescending magnanimity before turning  to Callida. He had a little gold mustache, Inez saw, and a quite ridiculous matching small beard. She had to stifle another urge, to cast an immediate shaving charm there. “You are more than welcome to address me in public as if in the private company of our families, Miss Burgess-Waites, if I may presume the same?  I’ll hex anyone _else_ here who presumes though,” he added immediately,  looking around before she could answer. “On either of us.”

Riddle’s expression didn’t change… He looked more coolly amused than anything else.. But the rest of the small group actually looked a bit abashed.

“I’ll try not to bother you with it,” Callida said awkwardly. “I mean… I’ll try not to be a bother.”

“You’re not a bother." He actually reached out and tugged a strand of hair. “Are you managing alright all by yourself, up there at the top of your ivory tower?”

And just like that… Callida’s demeanor shifted. Her shoulders straightened, and she stood tall, lifting her snub little nose.

“I’m just fine,” she said coolly to him, ignoring the spectators at large as if they'd suddenly Vanished. “And I quite like having the extra room. It means there’s plenty of space for Inez and her things, now that Professor Flitwick has suggested she move in to keep me company. Only as there are nine boys in my year in Ravenclaw and no other girls, he thought it an appropriate arrangement. She was so kind to agree, don’t you think, and has promised to teach me some spells that aren’t taught here at Hogwarts besides. We were about to go down to the lake right now, in fact, with Professor Flitwick so that he can assess her practical skills  before classes start tomorrow.  Would you like to join us? I’ll be writing to tell Mum and Dad all about it, and they’ll want to meet her, I know, so they might like to hear from you too, on what you think, since you’re in her year.”

He hesitated a moment, indecisively, his eyes darting again... Then...

“Why not,” he said. Callida lifted her little chin and stepped forward. Abraxas jumped a bit as she took, not his hand but his arm, very firmly indeed, and lifted her snub little nose even further.

“Shall we, then?” she said to him. “Mr. Malfoy?”

And Inez watched as before her eyes, the young man actually stood a little straighter, and lifted his own chin.

_I’m very good at encouraging people._

“We shall,” he said. “Miss Burgess-Waites.” The drawl was definitely affected, but deliberately so now, and when he glanced over at the boy who had made the first disparaging comment (or what he had interpreted as a disparaging comment) the lifted chin actually presented a bit of real defiance. Inez walked beside Flitwick down to the lake, nibbling on her lip as she watched the pair. Abraxas’ head bent slightly as Callida chattered to him, alternating self-consciously between ecstatically happy and giddy young  girl and one who was trying desperately  to present elegantly and properly for the boys who (however plonkery) he called his friends. At one point she bent a little and picked up what looked like a stick… When they reached the lake, all became clear; Abraxas whipped out his wand, tapped it in a lordly manner and waited till she’d seated herself comfortably on the resulting bench before sitting beside her.

“Well, Miss Hernandez?” the little Charms Master inquired. Inez jerked her attention away, and focused on him. He’d shortened his robes  and now wore a belt that cinched the loose folds tightly.

“May I be permitted to modify my clothing as well?” she asked. He bowed obligingly. She sighed in relief and kicked off her shoes immediately, stripping off the socks and stuffing them inside. She wriggled her bare toes happily on the grass as she transfigured her skirt and blouse and tie to a neat, knee-length  shift in Ravenclaw blue, and her black robes to the short-and- sleeveless, deep emerald green variety. Her arms and legs bare, she charmed her hair up, Summoned her fisherman’s cap from her satchel and settled it firmly on her head. As the final touch, she transfigured a large pebble to a brilliant fuchsia orchid, and with a quick sticking charm, attached it to the side of the cap. Professor Flitwick laughed in delight.

“Is that what you wear at Castelobruxo, Inez?” Callida called eagerly.

“Everything but the cap. It was my grandfather’s; he would wear it when he went fishing in his boat, on the Amazon River.”

“And you don’t wear shoes?”

“Sandals,” she said. “In many colours, typically to match our shifts. We must only wear closed shoes in the Potions laboratories and in the greenhouse complexes.” She flexed her fingers, turned her attention back to Flitwick, and projected a _Sonorus_ , to inform the curious and gathering crowds of students and teachers. “The way we begin is this; you are the professor, and I am the student, and as you are examining my progress, you must instruct me on a spell you wish to see me perform. Typically, we start with those on the standard curriculum list for my year, and once you are satisfied, we begin to improvise, not seeking to defeat each other, but to synchronize and create together, and to anticipate what the other will introduce and offer as steps in the dance. The results are always unique, and it is a very good way to get to know a new acquaintance besides.”

“The entire curriculum list?” Riddle inquired from where he was standing. “Or simply the Charms list?”

“We learn a great deal more than Charms at Castelobruxo,” Inez said without looking at him. “And I am prepared for the examinations in all of the classes I have taken there.”

“Well, you’ve just  covered Summoning charms, color charms, modification charms, sticking charms, and inanimate-to-animate transfiguration, and all before we’ve officially started, yet!” Flitwick said. “What about a nice substantive charm?”

Inez didn’t bat an eye, just pointed her wand at the lake. A stream of water shot up in a brilliant shimmering column, the top half dissolving into mist that coalesced into a huge translucent ball… The water fell back but the misty ball remained. With a quick, deft twist, she sliced it in quarters as an orange. It fell apart in neat segments, the outer shell dissolving into soft rain and pattering back down to the lake… The mist from the center coalesced into a  solid shimming globe, then reshaped into a slender rectangular brick, shimmering silver again, perhaps half the height of Inez’ knee and the width of her upper arm squared off. She pointed it at it and guided it over to rest on the grass before her, then murmured again. The texture of the brick seemed to shift. She rolled her wand between her palms rapidly, then tossed it, caught it and slashed swiftly left to right three times. The column shifted and settled again. She tucked her wand away, bent to scoop up the brick carefully, and brought it over to Callida, offering it with a bow and a smile. The girl gasped.

“It’s origami paper!” she said, delighted. “Oh, Inez!” Flitwick came over to examine a sheet, holding it up. It shimmered again, as moonlight on water, but remained, nevertheless, quite quite solid. Abraxas took a sheet, and too held it up.

“How long will it last?” he asked.

“It is true parchment,” Inez said. “Simply born of water rather than wood. One begins with the substantive charm to shift the water to its more malleable gaseous form and performs the sequences of necessary transfiguration from that point on.”

“Remarkable,” Flitwick beamed. “May I keep a sheet, Miss Burgess-Waites?”

“‘Course,” she said. “It’s really for me, Inez?"

“Of course. You may consider it an early birthday gift.”

Callida stood and kissed her cheek.

“You’re brilliant,” she informed her, and settled back, taking the sheet from Abraxas and beginning to fold industriously. Inez re-positioned herself. Flitwick ran her through demonstrations of perhaps two dozen other varied and standard OWL level spells, all of which she performed promptly and flawlessly.

“Well _done_ , my dear! That just leaves DADA to be going on with, so before we start in on the suggested collaborative theme… May I tempt you into a little demonstration of your skills there on the more competitive level?"

“Yes, of course. One moment, _por favor_.” His new student dug into her robe pocket, extracting a small cube. “First...” She pressed a facet. _"SONORUS MAXIMA!”_

“What the…”

“Grieg. 'Hall of the Mountain King'," Inez informed him as rising, thunderous music rose over the lake.  "It is one of the preferred opening themes at Castelobruxo for those demonstrating what they have learned in DADA and combat dueling. Concentration and the ability to adapt and to anticipate the rhythm of the battle is key.”

“Oh, Miss Hernandez.” Filius Flitwick grinned in anticipation. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Riddle came to sit beside Abraxas, leaning forward slightly in intent anticipation. “You are indeed a rare treasure. Is combat dueling one of your mandated courses?”

“ _Nao._ It is offered on invitation only, starting in fourth year, to those who have expressed interest and inclination in specific careers that demand professional-level proficiency. On the purely recreational level, there is a school-wide Dueling Association and an associated tourney once a term."

“Are you enrolled there, then?” Abraxas asked. “In the course, not just the association?” His pale face was alight with avid anticipation, though not in any negative manner.  He looked, in fact, quite as excited as Callida, though of course he wasn’t bouncing. Inez  couldn’t help but smile at his eager expression, and made a mental note to ask the girl if he followed the professional circuits... She rather expected she already knew the answer.

 _“Nao._ Antonio is though. He is the top student there, not just in the class, but in the school, and I train with him regularly. I do not have his potential - the school masters say that he could be an International Master one day if he continues to practice, and that is not a compliment they offer lightly -  but with his tutoring, I am, at least, never embarrassed by my performances in the tourneys.”

“You don’t say.  South America has offered up some truly spectacular competition at the Global Invitationals over the last century. Does he have any eventual ambitions there?”

“He has many ambitions,” Inez said. “As do I. We are sure of nothing at this point save that we plan always to work together to achieve them.”

“An excellent ambition in and of itself,” Flitwick  congratulated her, and with that, and as the music picked up in both volume and pace, they began to circle and cast. The gathered students whooped and cheered... Tom Riddle just leaned even further forward, watching narrowly and intently.


End file.
